Friends reflect on Peter Sculthorpe's final days

Adrienne Levenson had no idea who Peter Sculthorpe was when she first sat at his piano in the early 1970s. More into Joni Mitchell than Johann Sebastian, she had answered a newspaper ad to take lessons with pianist Michael Hannan, who, unbeknownst to her, was housesitting for the composer in Woollahra. Levenson, who learned her scales on one of Australia's most storied set of keys, says today: ''I was rock – I didn't know anything about Peter.''

Over the next 41 years, Levenson got to know Peter Sculthorpe better than almost anyone, taking on a role as his personal assistant when he returned to the home and then growing into one of his closest friends. Sculthorpe spent Christmases at Levenson's parents' home in Darling Point and sat with her and her sons at the movies, rustling through the packet of jelly snakes he always insisted on buying.

Australian of great note: The late composer Peter Sculthorpe at his Woollahra home. Credit:Steven Siewert

It was Levenson who was with the composer over his two and a half years of decline, and who, when he took a turn in his final weeks, began calling close friends to come visit him at Woollahra's Wolper Jewish Hospital. And it was Levenson who was with him as he took his final breaths at Wolper last Friday morning. ''Experiencing that with him somehow made the parting easier,'' she says.

As the world paid tribute to composer Peter Sculthorpe this weekend – the Prime Minister described him as ''a musical giant'' – his close friends and family marked the passing in their own ways. A former student and close friend of 51 years, composer Anne Boyd, dedicated her City2Surf run on Sunday to Sculthorpe. ''I took Peter with me the whole race,'' she says. ''We had beautiful conversations and at the end of the race I had to let him go – it was a very emotional moment.''

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Levenson marked the passing with Tim Freedman of the Whitlams, who had met Sculthorpe at an APRA after-party in 2001. On Friday night Levenson and Freedman met at Lucio's in Paddington – the place of their last meal together with Sculthorpe as a threesome – where they drank and shared memories of a friend nearly all describe in the same way: ''generous.''

For Levenson, that generosity was about the time he gave people. ''He always took taxis and he loved coming back and telling you everything about the driver he just had.''

For students, it came through in the attention he gave. Composer Paul Stanhope, whom Sculthorpe supervised from 1995 to 1999, says that just being noticed by Sculthorpe got him into ''this whole game''. ''I bless him and curse him at the same time for that,'' Stanhope says with a laugh. ''It was enough for him to say 'I liked your piano piece' and I thought, 'If Peter Sculthorpe liked it, there's something there.' ''

Students were more like apprentices than pupils, spending hours working with Sculthorpe at his Woollahra home. ''I had an enormous crush on Peter,'' says Boyd, who would go on to be engaged to him. ''When I knew he needed help, I ran.'' Boyd, Ross Edwards and others would work with him into the night in the 1960s, occasionally stopping for a coffee break (and, just as often, for a whiskey). The house became known as ''Central Station'' because of the comings and goings.

When Sculthorpe finished a piece, Central Station would swing open its doors to a handful of friends that would often swell to several dozen at celebrations that would stretch long into the evening. Sculthorpe, whose poison was cheap champagne, was always the last man standing.

''He could out-drink Tim Freedman,'' says Stanhope, and Freedman confirms that. When the composer delivered the singer his string interlude for the Whitlams' Out The Back in 2002, Freedman ''went to his house and didn't return for 48 hours. We were holed up in his studio sending out for champagne and talking about life''.

But work was always Sculthorpe's priority. ''I was always admonished by his work ethic,'' Freedman says. ''And he wrote more music in the past 15 years than he had written in the 15 years beforehand.''

The sickness that ravaged Sculthorpe over the past two and a half years has never been neatly defined. His eyesight was failing – he described it once to student and friend Ross Edwards as having ''a great blob in front of his eyes he wished he could see around'' – and his heart was weak. Levenson says there was a family history of liver failure, too. He was in and out of St Vincent's, Prince of Wales and Wolper.

Edwards recalls the last time he saw his friend of 51 years, visiting him in his room at Wolper some 40 years after Sculthorpe had acted as best man at his wedding.

His wife Helen brought ice-cream, but Sculthorpe paid more attention to ''a glass of brown-looking muck'' one of the nurses brought in. ''He said, 'I want it – it's good for me'. His mind was sharp, he had that will to live.''

They talked on these visits, as much as was possible, and Sculthorpe told Edwards he couldn't read or watch TV, as he used to late at night to turn his mind off.

Joel Meares is the Arts Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. Joel joined the Herald in 2007 as a writer on the(sydney)magazine before leaving to study for his Masters at Columbia University in New York. He returned in 2014 and now oversees coverage of the arts.